YOKO ONO REISSUED (2017): Back on plastic, Ono bands

In an
off-the-record aside back in 94, the producer Bill Laswell – who
recorded Yoko Ono's album Starpeace of '85 said to me she “sang
in the key of flat”.

He
also admitted he'd only done the album for the experience and to see
inside the Lennon-Ono Dakota apartment, and that he wouldn't comment
on the album musically.

Fair
enough.

Despite
decent reviews – Rolling Stones said it “seamlessly fused daring
with accessibility” and Newsweek hailed it as her “most
successful album yet” – the Starpeace album is only memorable for Laswell's
production, the heavy-hitting band of his friends (Bernie Worrell,
Sly'n'Robbie etc) and the clip that came with the single Hell in
Paradise.

Starpeace
isn't among the many Ono albums on Spotify.

It, along with the earlier Feeling the Space ('73), confirmed that singing straight and being a serious rock contender was not her forte. Her real art
was in her astonishing, soul-baring screaming and exorcisms of deep,
unspeakable and otherwise inchoate pains.

Her
work was reissued in '97 on CD by Rykodisc – all the albums to that
date, and the six CD Onobox in '92 – but now there an excellent
reissue of her albums on vinyl through Secretly Canadian (distributed
in New Zealand by Rhythmethod) and it starts with the three albums
after that seminal POB release.

The
albums are Fly, Approximately Infinite Universe and Feeling the
Space.

The
latter two were attempts at more mainstream rock acceptance
(musically, her uncompromising feminist stance may have pushed many
away) but most attention alights on the extraordinary double album
Fly, one record with fellow travellers Lennon, bassist Klaus Voorman,
drummers Jim Keltner or Ringo and others.

The
other record in the set is . . . Well, more of that in a minute.

Ignoring
the reductive rock'n'roll of the opener on the first record
(Midsummer New York), things really open up with the 17 minute
Mind Train which rides a mesmerising Can-like groove (Chris Osborne
on dobro) over which she delivers her bratty vocals and tremulous
shouting which find their counterpart in Lennon's shuddering guitar.
It;'s really quite something.

Elsewhere
– putting aside the 30 second Toilet Piece, everyone records a
toilet flushing when they get their first tape recorder – there is
her commanding five-minute Don't Worry Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking
For Hand in the Snow) which she delivered to such devastating and
audience-clearing effect at the Toronto Peace Festival Heard and
experienced on the Live Peace in Toronto album with Lennon, Clapton
and others (69), the terrifically staccato funk of Hire aka Open You
Box which had been a b-side on Lennon's Power to the People in
Britain (with a substituted line for “open your legs”) but
dropped n the US where the single's flip-side was her Touch Me.

There
is also the piano ballad Mrs Lennon which is quite delightful and the
darkly ethereal O'Wind (Body is the Scar) with a double tabla part
(Jim Keltner and Jim Gordon).

If
this record of the two is an extension of the POB release in places t
also allowed her to explore a more considered side of her
personality.

The
second record in the set looks in a very different and experimental
direction. A decade or so before Tom Waits investigated the homemade
instruments and unusual scales of Harry Partch, Ono
deployed such odd instruments made by her Fluxus friend Joe Jones for
sonic landscapes of strange percussion, drones, clattering and of
course Ono's distinctive vocals (echoed and swooping in and out of
the mix).

Jones
co-produced some of these pieces with Ono and Lennon, and the
standouts are the 10 minute-plus Airmale which opens this second
record, and the side-long title track which acted as the demanding
soundtrack to her arthouse film of a fly crawling over a woman's
naked body. Again her squeaks, child-like moans and soft cries seem
to come from a very different place in consciousness.

Admittedly
this self-produced piece is a very tough call for anyone to get
through this 22 minute piece – the Donald Duck noises at the
mid-point will have you amused if you've lasted that far – but the
ones conceived with Jones (Airmale, the weirdly disembodied Don't
Count the Waves, the wind-up monkey on speed/psych ward vocals of
You) pointed in a new direction in both art music and rock culture.

And
the vinyl reissue also comes with a download which includes four
extra tracks of (mostly) equal merit and challenge, notably the
industrial noise-with-panting of The Path.

Few
would follow her down that path however, and for a while even she
backed away.

Her
follow-up Approximately Infinite Universe – also a double, with
Elephant's Memory Band who appeared on the Lennon -Ono Sometime in
New York City – erred much more towards pop and rock, often with
trite political lyrics about “the revolution”, feminism and her
relationship with Lennon (pushing the feminists away saying he was
doing his best on the lyrically and melodically clumsy I Want My Love
to Rest Tonight -- which her weak singing voice couldn't carry, or
coming from a wealthy and positioned woman, were convincing.

Despite
their best efforts to promote it and the pulling away from the scream
factor, the album sounds dated, musically ordinary, lyrically
try-hard and naïve for the most part.

Feeling
the Space the same year – originally intended as a double – found
her trying even more for the song-factor on ballads, oddly
interesting cabaret-styled piano songs and rock (with some excellent
players but Lennon just on production aside from some minor guitar
parts).

The
over-riding feminist theme certainly captured the zeitgeist but again
the album held little interest for anyone and didn't even appear on
the US top 200. It doesn't even rate a mention in Jerry Hopkins'
Yoko Ono: A Biography of '87.

And
that was it for Yoko Ono as a solo artists for seven years when she
appeared on half of the Double Fantasy album alongside Lennon, who
was not long for this world.

Curiously enough, although both men
were artists living in the same city not far from each other, had
friends in common and sometimes attended the same exhibitions, they
never met.
They were... > Read more